Blog o cestovaní nielen po Japonsku / Travel blog

21. April 2014

17. apríl – Ghibli Museum a JAXA

EN:Today I finally managed to fulfill one of my long-term plans – the visit of Ghibli museum in Mitaka. Even if you know virtually nothing about Anime, this animation studio is well-known for its commercial success all around the world, especially in the US and UK. Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My neigbour Totoro – all critically acclaimed works which are presented in this museum. Since Ghibli is famous and its museum too, it’s very tricky to get the ticket. Foreign visitors have pretty much two options, as far as I am concerned – one, order the ticket through one of the official distribution agencies in your home country, or two – get the ticket yourself in Japan through the ticketing machines in Lawson stores. The first part is quite straight forward, but only in case you have a holiday with exact daily plans. I chose the second option, as I didn’t really know when I wanted to visit the museum – which was not an easy task to do. The ticket machines (check my post about Anime Japan 2014, I had the same problem) do NOT communicate in English. Therefore you have to find someone who can help you out with the ticket purchase. I was lucky, one of my housemates attended the Japanese course in English and her tutor was so nice that she agreed to go to Lawsons with me and to get me the blasted ticket. However, that wasn’t particularly easy even for a native Japanese speaker – the purchasing system is not very bright, it doesn’t show you the dates which are sold out, so we had to try and fail until our success every day for two weeks on the touchscreen to finally reach the date, during which there were still some tickets available. Plus – you have to enter your name, in Hiragana and Katakana + Kanji of course, which is, for most of the foreigners, quite a difficult task to do. Well, we managed, somehow. So I got the ticket for Thursday, 12PM. When I was on my way to the museum, I was slightly late, so I almost broke my legs to get there on time, I was afraid I would miss the entry time – but what a surprise, I arrived 10 minutes before the entry time, the visitors entered and left however and whenever they wanted – I don’t really understand the reason why there were time slots in the machine and how do they work, but hey – I got inside.

EN:You can get the rough idea about the situation inside of the museum from the picture above. It was rammed. There were plenty of people virtually everywhere, on every step, on every corned, inside of each and every room. Taking pictures and shooting videos inside the museum premises is strictly prohibited except in designated areas (as one of the above), if you show even the smallest attempt to take the picture, you will be approached by one of the staff members with a warning. There were moments, when people had to wait in queues, which is not nice when you are visiting the film museum. Well, what can I do about it. The museum itself is really something special, if you follow the films made by Miyazaki, you will definitely like it, it’s like the gate to his world – there are rooms which are exact copies of the scenes from the films, crafted with every little detail and every single artifact shown in the movie. It’s really something hard to describe.

After the visit I had a walk planned to JAXA headquarters in the same town district. JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) is a Japanese version of American NASA, which has various campuses and centers all around the country, most of them accessible for tourists. This one is in Chofu, it’s the HQ, the Aerospace Center. You need a passport to enter the premises, there are numerous models and videos, pictures and a very welcoming staff, members of which spoke very good English. In case you are interested in space programs and all the related stuff, you will definitely like this place. I was recommended to visit other JAXA centers, I actually visited one of them later on during my last days in Japan and it was even better than this one. But I am very thankful I was told about this in Chofu HQ.